Reddit mentions of CCENT/CCNA ICND1 Official Exam Certification Guide, 2nd Edition

The CCNA one is in very high demand. I took part in a lecture held by Todd Lammle at Birmingham City University a few months ago. He basically said the best jobs to get into right now are communications, virtualization and web aplication development. It's kind of obvious really considering the trend towards cloud computing, on demand services and most importantly converged networks.

If you want to do the CCNA I would recommend skipping CompTIA N+ all together. But be warned CCNA is not something you can jump into that easily. From my experience, which isn't that much but it is a little, best books for the CCNA are the ICND1, ICND2 and Todd Lammle's CCNA Study Guide. I strongly recommend taking a course for the CCNA as the practice is not easily achieved at home (lack of equipment unless you have money to spend on second hand cisco routers, switches, cables, etc.).

Other than that, best of luck!

As for the Microsoft ones... meh, a book and a few virtual machines should get you sorted.

Get the CCENT book and sign up to take the exam. It's a great way to start, also check out the CBTNuggests videos for CCENT. They do a great way of explaining everything and help with the test taking process.

If you have time, I'd try for the "old" ccna and go with the odom second edition icnd books, they're much cheaper.. I've heard of McQuerry but I haven't read anything by him.

~$5 shipped for each one

http://amzn.com/1587201828

http://amzn.com/158720181X

Would you use this book.